FULL VIDEO OF BOOK DISCUSSION
ELECTION STUDIES POLITICS
Watch the full video (above) of the book discussion on ‘How the BJP Wins: Inside India’s Greatest Election Machine’, between author and well-known journalist Prashant Jha, and CPR’s in-house election expert and Senior Fellow, Neelanjan Sircar. The discussion explored in detail the BJP’s formidable election machine with authority and insight.
CLEARING THE AIR: MONTHLY COLUMN IN THE HINDUSTAN TIMES BY NAVROZ K DUBASH
AIR POLLUTION POLITICS
In the fifth instalment of a monthly op-ed series in the Hindustan Times entitled ‘Clearing the Air,’ Professor Navroz K Dubash explains why India must get serious about land, air and water reform to avoid a middle income environment trap.
With 15 years of high growth, India is now firmly a middle income country. Can India at 75 sustain this growth, or will it fall into the “middle income trap” that has plagued other emerging nations? The middle income trap results when growth is undercut by the changes it induces, such as East Asia’s low-wage labour-led growth undercut by rising wages in response to prosperity.
What are the risks of a middle income trap for India, and what is the likely driver? While cheap labour may not be a problem, India’s Achilles’ heel is likely to be the inefficient use of natural resources and growing pollution levels. According to the World Bank’s “Systematic Country Diagnostic,” India has less land and water available, and greater pollution, at lower levels of gross domestic product (GDP) than other middle income countries. India’s middle income trap is likely to be a natural resources and environment trap.
What could the new government do to ensure it does not fall deeper into a middle income environment trap? Clearly, past governments’ approach of sacrificing environment for growth makes the problem worse. Instead, a more nuanced approach is needed that looks at growth and natural resources as complementary objectives. Policy notes produced at the Centre for Policy Research provide some ideas for reform on the core issues of land, air and water.
First, disputes over land exert an enormous drag on the economy affecting investments worth USD 200 billion. Some 66% of civil cases in courts are tied to land and property. As Namita Wahi, a fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, explains, the problem lies in a complex, inconsistent land acquisition framework — an estimated 102 laws — coinciding with widespread local conflict over use and control over common lands governed by another set of statutes and conventions. With multiple ministries involved, and high rates of judicial pendency, ensuring peoples’ rights even while enabling land for economic development has become a Gordian knot.
The government must make a start on unpicking this knot, although this effort cannot come at the risk of running roughshod over peoples’ rights to the commons. Administratively, bridging separate rural and urban land use issues, reducing administrative fragmentation, and enabling transparency are all necessary. As this discussion suggests, unpicking the land problem is deeply tied to larger challenges of making the Indian state work better.
Second, India’s air pollution crisis is severe and requires attention beyond current scattershot efforts. For example, it is estimated to reduce the life expectancy of a child born in India by 2.6 years — more than that in hotspots like north India. To begin with, a few big-ticket ideas should be implemented swiftly and thoroughly. These include revamping Ujjwala to provide sustained LPG use for cooking; enforcing new power plant standards; implementing improved fuel quality standards; and massively increasing investments in public transport to ensure India’s cities are not locked into private mobility. These won’t solve the problem entirely, but they are a down-payment on credible action. To progress beyond these immediate measures requires a serious upgrade of our pollution control boards at the Centre and states; India’s air pollution cannot be solved without stronger regulatory institutions. Finally, a city by city approach has to rapidly give way to a broader airshed approach.
Third, water deserves to be high on the policy agenda; the Niti Aayog has warned that India’s water is in a crisis situation. Many states face acute water scarcity, water available per Indian declines every year, monsoons are becoming erratic, and water tables are falling even as we grow ever more dependent on groundwater. As Philippe Cullet, a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, suggests, the underlying challenge is one of water governance. Laws governing water use are inconsistent between surface and groundwater, groundwater law allows landowners control over pumping irrespective of the costs to others and to the aquifer, governance is scattered across institutions at multiple scales, and rules do not cater adequately to urban and rural differences.
These governance problems could be ameliorated by taking forward a National Water Framework bill to provide a single unifying frame of reference for water policy. Another important effort is a complementary Model Groundwater (Sustainable Management) Bill to take forward with states. Both efforts rest on long deliberation starting in 2011 by the UPA government and taken forward in 2015 by the NDA government. While implementation challenges will remain, new framework legislation will lay a platform to help ease India’s water governance woes.
If India is to avoid a middle income environment trap, we have to get serious about land, air and water reform. But there is an important caution. Reform should not be understood as an uncritical hacking away of legal and administrative safeguards, some of which are put in place to protect the poor and vulnerable who depend on natural resources for livelihood. Instead, in all three cases, the underlying challenges are governance-related: ensuring availability of resources, without degrading their quality, and while safeguarding the interests of the poor.
Navroz K Dubash is a Professor at the Centre for Policy Research. This is the fifth article in a monthly op-ed series in the Hindustan Times entitled ‘Clearing the Air.’ The original article, which was posted on June 19, 2019, can be found here.
Read more in the Clearing the Air series:
AN ANALYSIS IN THE RUN-UP
ELECTION STUDIES POLITICS
As 8 November approaches, read CPR researchers Neelanjan Sircar, Bhanu Joshi and Ashish Ranjan’s latest piece from the field on what is the likely result of the Bihar elections.
With no clear answer, their field observations analyse the importance of and the difference between the ground-level campaigns run by the Grand Alliance and the NDA. Whatever be the final outcome, the impact of the results of these elections will reverberate throughout Indian politics, they write.
FULL AUDIO OF THE PANEL DISCUSSION
ECONOMY
Listen to the audio (above) of the panel discussion on ‘Human Rights, Economic Development, Mega Projects and their Impacts’, where panelists R Sreedhar from Mines, Minerals and People; Namita Wahi from CPR, Natalia Angelo Cabo, from University of Los Andes, Bogota, and Komala Ramachandra from Accountability Counsel discussed the different dimensions of the impacts of development oriented mega projects on the lives and livelihoods of the poorest and most marginalised communities, both in India and Colombia.
The panelists spoke about the direct relation between resource extractions and human rights violations in India; the need for regulatory norms in carrying out environmental and social impact assessments of infrastructure projects; and the role civil society can play in attempting to ensure accountability of multilateral financial institutions that finance such projects at the cost of human rights.
FULL VIDEO OF LECTURE
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS ECONOMY
Watch the full video (above) of the lecture by Aravind Subramanian, where he uses a historical lens to analyse the future trajectory of globalisation, in light of the recent global developments.
In recent years, the international system has witnessed a series of developments which possibly portend tectonic shifts in the global political economy. In this talk, Subramanian examines and contextualises these developments to understand what they mean for the open global system and for India’s role in it.
Arvind Subramanian is the Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India, on leave from his position as the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He has written on growth, trade, development, institutions, aid, oil, India, Africa, and the World Trade Organisation, and has published widely in academic and other journals.
PART 4 OF A BLOG SERIES BY THE CENTRE FOR POLICY RESEARCH (CPR) AND PRAYAS (ENERGY GROUP)
ENERGY RESEARCH
The series is titled ‘Plugging in: Electricity consumption in Indian Homes’.
Electricity consumption debates, for the most part, focus on high-rise residential and commercial establishments, often ignoring low-income housing. The rationale for this omission is the low level of electricity use in affordable housing, with the assumption that little is at stake from its consideration in national energy and climate debates. This, however, may no longer be true.
As India urbanises, housing has been unable to keep pace. The housing shortage is reported to be near 19 million units, with low-income households accounting for the largest proportion. The government’s ‘Housing for All’ programme aims to fill this gap by providing affordable housing for 20 million households by 2022. This new construction will partly condition future energy use from the provision of basic services, with increased access to electricity and commercial appliance markets. In this post, we examine the most basic use of electricity within affordable homes – lighting.
Lighting forms a large share of electricity services availed by low-income homes and consequently the electricity bill. Technologically, LED bulbs provide the largest reduction in lighting electricity consumption, without reducing the amount of light provided, and with a lifespan that is up to 25 times that of an ordinary bulb. However, LED bulbs cost more, which can deter the willingness of households to pay. As described in this series’ previous post, the government’s UJALA scheme has increased the use of LEDs by bringing down costs and increasing awareness. However, the programme’s impacts on low income households, those with the potential for maximum benefits, are not yet clear.
Are lower income households purchasing technologically advanced LED bulbs? We conducted a survey in 2017, about a year after the launch of the UJALA scheme, in Rajkot, Gujarat to examine lighting services in low-income homes. This is part of an ongoing study on energy use in low income urban households under the CapaCITIES project. We find LED penetration in the sample surveyed is remarkably high at 63% of all bulbs (Figure 1).
Figure 1: LED penetration in the affordable housing sample (stock level)
Source: Rajkot affordable housing energy survey (Khosla et al., in preparation)
Household assets and LED penetration
To understand this high rate of LED use, we categorise results according to the three types of government affordable housing: BSUP or Basic Services for the Urban Poor (built 2007 onwards); EWS or Economically Weaker Sections; and LIG or Low Income Groups housing (EWS and LIG are built under the Housing for All programme, 2015 onwards) (Figure 2). The categories broadly correlate to income – BSUP residents, on average, being the poorest in the sample, and LIG, the best off.
Figure 2: Household LED penetration rates
Source: Rajkot affordable housing energy survey (Khosla et al., in preparation)
Figure 2 shows that the widespread use of LEDs is especially true for EWS and LIG categories, with more than 90% having at least one LED. Tube lights, CFLs, and incandescent bulbs on the other hand have lower penetration rates in these homes. Further, homes are buying more than one LED. The mode number of LEDs in a EWS home is three, and in LIG homes is five. This is within the number provided under the UJALA scheme in Rajkot, which is up to 10 subsidised LEDs per home at Rs. 80 per 9W bulb.
We also find that LED ownership, standardised for home sizes, is correlated with household assets or their ability to consume (Figure 3). Richer homes buy more LEDs, though a degree of incandescent bulbs persist in the system. And while Figures 2 and 3 show a strikingly high rate of LED use, they also show that not all homes have made this transition. Specifically, BSUP homes – which are of the lowest-income of the three categories – have about half the LED penetration compared with EWS and LIG homes (Figure 2) and the mode number of LEDs owned in BSUP homes is zero.
igure 3: Lighting ownership across the consumption asset index (standardized for number of rooms)
Source: Rajkot affordable housing energy survey (Khosla et al., in preparation)
Awareness of the LED scheme
Why do some households buy LEDs and others don’t? Is the difference a function of households’ awareness of the LED scheme (Figure 4)?
Figure 4: Awareness rates of the LED and Smart Cities schemes
Source: Rajkot affordable housing energy survey (Khosla et al., in preparation)
Awareness of the LED scheme maps on to the ownership of LED bulbs in housing types. EWS and LIG homes are much more aware about the scheme, and own many more LEDs, while the reverse is true for BSUP. To test if awareness about government schemes was generally high, or whether this was particular to UJALA, we also asked households of their awareness of the Smart City scheme which is well advertised in the city. Less than 1% of households reported awareness of this flagship city scheme – compared with high awareness of UJALA.
At the same time, it is not that all households know about the LED scheme – especially not the poorer BSUP homes. We find from discussions with residents that the most successful scheme awareness measure was the information that persons (predominantly men) got at the local utility bill payment centre. Bill payers could purchase LEDs at the payment centre itself, including with no upfront cost and monthly instalments, an option available by a third of the purchasers as per scheme representatives. Learning about a money saving scheme at the point of bill payment worked well to motivate participation. In addition, media campaigns for the scheme were important for those who spent time watching TV or listening to the radio, especially women. However, homes with different circumstances, such as in the lower income BSUP homes – where electricity connections and payment structures could be informal; the radio and TV were used less; and bills were paid by younger family members because of multiple jobs – did not benefit similarly. In the next round of LED deployment, unpacking these differences in scheme awareness will be important to influence path dependent lighting use patterns.
In the next post, we move from lighting to appliances and examine the efficiency impacts from India’s standards and labeling programmes.
This piece is authored by Radhika Khosla and Ankit Bhardwaj at the Centre for Policy Research.
This blog series is also available on the Prayas website here.
Other posts in this series:
IN CONVERSATION WITH NEELANJAN SIRCAR, BHANU JOSHI AND ASHISH RANJAN
ELECTION STUDIES POLITICS
CPR researchers Neelanjan Sircar, Bhanu Joshi, and Ashish Ranjan did extensive field work in Assam and Bengal during the elections, and shared their insights on Upper Assam and Barak Valley; the Muslim vote in Assam; and on the Poriborton (change) brought about by Mamata Banerjee in Bengal.
Drawing on their field experience over the past couple of months, they share below their thoughts on the big wins for the BJP in Assam and the TMC in Bengal.
What are your thoughts on the TMC and Mamata Banerjee’s landslide victory in Bengal?
Neelanjan: The Left-Congress Alliance has been left in a very bad shape, and they will have to re-assess everything. To begin with they need to find a state level neta (leader) who resonates with the people, and identify a major gap that the TMC is not addressing. The problem was they had no real campaign issue this time. Interestingly, the Congress won many more seats than the Left, which has officially reduced the Left to the third party, despite it having a larger vote share.
Bhanu: In the absence of a political script for the Left-Congress Alliance, what we saw clearly was that rural Bengal was backing Mamata, and the Left had completely lost the rural connect. They will have to introspect and seriously think about how to rebuild this connect.
What this victory means for Mamata Banerjee is that she will have a strengthened position in the Rajya Sabha, and can negotiate more effectively with the Centre to mend the flagging finances of Bengal.
Ashish: Mamata Banerjee will also have to focus on the creation of new jobs, which is a huge demand, or things will be difficult in Bengal, going forward.
Neelanajan: Mamata’s ground-level control is crucial to her ability to deliver on promises, like roads. At the same, this same control has yielded a significant amount of fear and violence. This was evident during the election season. There is a real concern about this spinning out of control. It is an open question whether she can control it or not, but she must be wary of the possibility of the situation going awry, as it did for the Left.
Ashish: Due to her style of operating, which runs on her charismatic authority, Mamata Banerjee does not have an organisational structure, unlike the Left. If she cannot restrict goons in her party, either the cadre will rebel or leave the party. This would make things very difficult for her in 2021.
Thank you for those insights on what TMC’s victory means for Bengal. What are your thoughts on the BJP’s victory in Assam?
Bhanu: Assam is a very complex state, but the way it has voted decisively goes to show that the binaries we create to understand the political contexts no longer hold. The theory of vote-bank politics does not work, Muslims are no longer a vote-bank. Out of the 49 constituencies in districts with more than 50% Muslim population, 15 have voted for the BJP, and the rest are divided among the other parties. There is some complexity in the methodology but could we have thought five years ago that BJP would be ruling two states—Jammu and Kashmir and Assam—with the highest Muslim population? No.
Today, people are voting for development, and the BJP ran a much better campaign on the ground in Assam, focused on developmental issues. This shows that when political parties plan elections, they need to be very prepared because they are reaching out to a very sophisticated voter.
Ashish: Now that the BJP has come to power, it will be interesting to see how they manage the Bangladeshi Muslim migrant issue, which they have been ideologically opposed to.
Neelanjan: We have looked at three Eastern states so far, Bihar, Assam, and Bengal, and it is clear that the defining narrative has been of development—of a certain sort. Development that is extremely visible, tangible, and this has brought a new dimension back into politics. It indicates a certain kind of accountability that the voter now demands of the party in power, and this is a very positive trend, not just for the states, but for India as a whole.
NEW WORKING PAPER BY S CHANDRASEKHAR, MUKTA NAIK, SHAMINDRA NATH ROY
URBAN GOVERNANCE MIGRATION
Beyond summing up salient migration trends from existing data sources; a new working paper by researchers from Centre for Policy Research and Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research (IGIDR) builds on a critique of the estimations made by the Economic Survey 2017 to outline fresh ideas for developing leading indicators that will help inform policy. This is particularly needed because even as Indian policymakers are increasingly recognising the linkages between migration, labour markets and economic development, the lack of frequently updated datasets limits our understanding of migration.
We recognise the contribution of the Economic Survey in using innovative approaches to measure migration, viz. the age cohort metric that tracks age-cohorts across census periods and the measurement of mobility through the sale of unreserved railway tickets. However, we also see limitations – for instance, the high levels of work-related movement outlined in the Survey seems to be at odds with the challenges India is facing with job creation and also incongruent with indicative data from Census 2011 that shows a decline in the importance of work in the reasons for migration. These inconsistencies need additional exploration.
The relatively low estimation of migration by the first method (Census 2011) and the higher estimation by the second (Economic Survey 2017) speaks to discrepancies in how we define and understand different kinds of mobilities and migration in the country. For instance, we discuss how the high levels of seasonal migration and commuter movement revealed by analysing Census and NSSO (National Sample Survey Office) data demands urgent policy response especially on transportation and mobility. In fact, given relatively stable geographies of migration in India, receiving states can leverage data to evolve migrant-inclusive policies with a focus on cities, which are increasingly important destinations for migrants. These may require specific interventions in affordable housing, transport, basic services, political inclusion, skilling and livelihood. Moreover, portability of social benefits for inter-State migrants is an urgent area where inter-State mechanisms need to be strengthened.
Following the Economic Survey’s effort, we contend that the exercise of improving data on migration and commuting need not be restricted to revamping government surveys. Innovative ways of improving collecting information and tracking movement could include leveraging administrative data collected by the government through digital databases ranging from sources like birth and death registrations to scheme-related data. Ticket sales data from state road transport corporations, especially on routes where daily commuting is the norm, would be particularly useful for commuting-intensive destinations. Trails of ‘big data’ left by user transactions and digital activity, particularly mobile phone usage, are also areas that must be explored, subject to privacy considerations. Triangulating multiple datasets is important to improve data-driven policy reforms that can help India plan for those individuals who change locations permanently as well as those who move seasonally.
The thinking for this paper has emerged from the extensive work on migration done under the Strengthen and Harmonize Research and Action on Migration (SHRAMIC) initiative supported by the Tata Trusts, in which IGIDR, CPR and the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) have been involved as knowledge partners. Further, many insights emerge from the authors’ involvement, in the capacity of members and research support, with the Working Group on Migration established by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India and chaired by Partha Mukhopadhyay at CPR. Further impetus for the paper was provided by robust discussions on migration estimates fuelled by innovative approaches used in the Economic Survey 2017. The Economic and Political Weekly has recently accepted this paper for publication.
FULL VIDEO OF LECTURE
RIGHTS
Watch the full video (above) of the lecture on ‘Hate Speech or the Speech We Hate’ featuring Salil Tripathi.
What constitutes hate speech and what makes it dangerous? The term hate speech has been defined loosely and takes different interpretations for the speaker and the listener. The speakers who express views forcefully believe they are expressing their right to speak freely. The listeners consider the speech they don’t like or agree with as hate speech. Laws impose restrictions on free speech in most jurisdictions, and litigation can restrict free expression of ideas. But sustained hate speech can kill – genocides begin with normalisation of hatred through speech – action follows later, as examples from Rwanda and Bosnia show. A new framework, which distinguishes between hate speech and dangerous speech can provide clarity to distinguish between speech that promotes hate and violence and the ideas we hate but are merely controversial, provocative, hurtful, shocking, and disgusting for some. Negotiating that space is the challenge for democracies in the age of the Internet.
Salil Tripathi is the Chair of the Writers in Prison Committee of PEN International, since 2015. He is an award-winning journalist and writer.
WATCH VIDEO OF THE CONSULTATIVE WORKSHOP
POLITICS
Watch the two-part video (Part 1 above) of a workshop, which discussed the findings of a two-year-long project called ‘Newly created states and Inclusive Development: The subnational political settlements of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh’. The research was conducted collaboratively by CPR and the Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) research cluster at the University of Manchester, UK.
The research analysed the trajectories of development by the ‘sub-national political settlements’ in the states of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh in two domains. These included mining and the provision of food subsidies through the Public Distribution System. Both formed in 2000, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are comparable for their high incidences of poverty, poor tribal populations, and vast reserves of mineral wealth.
Participants at the workshop included experts from the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, ESID research centre, King’s India Institute etc.
